


Lessons

by utsu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 19:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7520968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsu/pseuds/utsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes when he lays in bed at night and closes his eyes but doesn’t yet sleep, he thinks of the way she closes her eyes when she smiles at strangers; the way she traces her lips with her thumbnail when she’s thinking deeply; the way her laughter welcomes every figment of light into the joy of her expression, and holds.</p><p>First and foremost, Naruto learns that Hyuuga Hinata is easy to love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Class president Hinata and delinquent Naruto. This story can also be found on [tumblr](http://utsus.tumblr.com/post/146998948924/i-dont-know-how-you-feel-about-high-school-aus) :^)

Uzumaki Naruto cannot afford a tutor.

He can barely afford a _meal_. He makes due by selling gum on the streets, sometimes, and catching runaway pets on his off days. Usually, though, he feels too guilty to take the money offered from those jobs—it’s just the right thing to do, returning a loved one back to their family. It’s not something that should have a monetary value placed upon it.

Naruto tucks his hands into his pockets and yawns, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. The morning light shines down in glistening rainbow hues, tinged with pastels, and clouds arc slowly across the open expanse of sky. The Academy looms ahead of him, scraping the clouds; sunlight reflects off of countless windows, making it hard to stare without blinking.

Someone moves past him, jostling his shoulder without apology, and Naruto doesn’t do much else but grumble. It’s still early and no matter the fact that he’s been waking himself up early for school for over a decade, it never gets easier. He’s fairly certain it was easier to wake up before noon when he was in his first year of university, but maybe that’s just an assumption.

Regardless, he doesn’t actually become lucid enough to recognize his surroundings as anything more than the norm of his day-to-day world until he catches sight of a familiar fall of raven hair. The wind runs lithe fingers through the ends, lifting and swirling, and Naruto feels his lips quirk into a fond grin.

Hyuuga Hinata, one of the brightest of their generation, the girl who always smiles.

Their class president.

She’s been in several of his classes, enough to lead him to believe that they might share a major, but he’s never really spoken to her. He keeps to himself during university hours, trying desperately to keep up with the workloads even when he often doesn’t understand the lessons being taught. She rarely raises her hand to answer questions aloud, but he’s peeked over her shoulder countless times and seen perfect marks on numerous papers and exams.

The girl knows her stuff, and Naruto can’t help but to admire someone like that.

Especially considering that he is on the polar opposite side of the class, scraping the dregs of the barrel in terms of knowledge gained and knowledge expressed. Not for lack of trying, though, but regardless. He’s working three jobs and the information they’re learning is ridiculously detailed and complex—and on top of that, he just isn’t a natural learner in a classroom setting.

Give him a street scenario and he’ll ace the test with his hands tied behind his back. Ask him to take apart an entire engine and put it back together correctly, and he’ll do you one better and finish in under seven minutes. He can walk into any closed space and tell you in seconds the exact, precise number of people present with just a glance. He can sit down and draw you a map of the city, with every side street and back alley included, without any references.

But he can’t get a handle on statistics, or English, or chemistry.

He walks through the front doors with lips pursed, his first class only a few hundred feet in. He takes his usual seat near the back and leans his chair back, hands still in his pockets. He closes his eyes and dozes off until he hears the telltale screech of the chair in front of him, and a faint scent of lavender trails through the air.

He catches Hyuuga Hinata’s gaze by accident, right when he blinks his eyes open. She doesn’t startle or raise a brow curiously; unfazed that the Academy’s delinquent is ogling her. She only smiles, a soft and tender thing that makes Naruto’s heart shudder. She dips her head a little, a shy greeting, and takes her seat.

Naruto tries to focus on the lesson, from that point on, but everything is lost to him except the faint scent of lavender.

And that gentle smile.

 

✧

 

Naruto has to leave his last class early in order to make it to the shop on time. He checks his cracked watch as he’s moving through the halls, cursing under his breath as he sees the big hand tick ever further away. His head is still bowed low when he pushes through the front doors and takes the stairs two at a time, feet moving quick enough to blur.

He’s so distracted that he doesn’t see them, at first.

He moves right on past until he hears the crunch of skin against skin, and his shoulders turn before he even recognizes the sound. He blinks at the scene across the front yard, eyes honing in on a group of three crowding and harassing someone desperately clutching his bag. Naruto’s heart races with nerves, pressing in against his ribcage with indecision. It’s only that long that he hesitates, a few heartbeats, before any thought of making it to work on time flies over his head as he races towards the fight.

“Hey!” He calls, just as the tallest of the three draws his arm back to deliver another punch to the kid’s already bruising cheekbone. “What the fuck!”

They turn in near-unison, and Naruto leaps the moment he’s close enough and tackles the main offender to the dirt. He gets a scraped up elbow and some rocks dug into his knees and shins for his aggression, but the guy subsides fairly easily the moment he realizes who it is that’s interfered with his bullying. Naruto can barely believe that things like this still happen, now that they’re in their twenties.

He doesn’t recognize the man under him, is sure he’s never seen him before, but there’s instant recognition and the swift curl of fear moving over his expression. He brings his hands up defensively, doesn’t even move under Naruto’s subduing weight, and says, “Hey man, I don’t want any trouble.”

Naruto gives him a pointed look, before turning over his shoulder to make sure he’s not about to get ambushed by the other two men present. They back away, however, nearly tripping over each other the moment his eyes turn their way. He nearly rolls his eyes, equal parts flabbergasted and incredulous, but then he catches sight of the victim, sees the tears.

“Hey,” he says, tone softening to something more soothing, less grit and more fuss. “It’s gonna be okay, man.”

The man nods, white-knuckled grip on his bag still tightening as if his fear had yet to subside. Naruto turns back to the man under his hands, and watches the way he trembles.

“That’s not cool,” he snarls, “don’t be a jerk. What did you even want?”

“Just money,” he responds immediately, hands still up to protect his face.

“Money,” Naruto says, this time allowing his eyes to roll. “You got a job?”

“N-no.”

“You looking for a job?”

The man’s slippery expression is answer enough, and Naruto finds himself sighing, hands still curled in the material of his shirt.

“Look for a job, and you’ll get money without being a jerk. It’s difficult to find a job, sure, but once you do get one? It’ll feel great to have some income.”

The man looks up at him with wide eyes, gaping. Naruto sighs again, and uncurls the fingers of one of his hands from the man’s shirt. The movement of his arm startles him anew, and he quickly says, “Please!”

Naruto tilts his head at him, and says, “It’s so shitty to pick on someone. To pick on anyone. It’ll feel so much more rewarding to make your own money, man, believe it.”

He waits, then, allowing silence to fall heavily over them. He hears scuffed footsteps and turns over his shoulder to see the other two men turning, legs already pumping. They run the entire way off of the Academy’s property, and then all the way out of Naruto’s line of sight. He frowns, turns back to the man under him to gauge his expression.

When he finds no sign of acceptance or repentance, he tightens his fist in the material over the man’s chest and pushes hard enough for his knuckles to leave marks on his skin. He grits his teeth, hating that he has to use intimidation to ensure compliance, considering the lesson he’s trying to teach, but it seems like the only way.

He snarls, “Man, if I catch you doin’ shit like this again, you’re not gonna like what I have to say about it. You’re _really_ not gonna like it.”

“Okay,” the guy says, breathless and startled. His eyes are wide and wild, caged prey looking for an escape. Naruto gives him one, crawling off of him with one last threatening press of his knuckles. He gets back to his feet and watches the man scramble to do the same, moving in a way that Naruto knows belies an injury. He’d thought his trajectory had been more careful than that, but apparently he’d been wrong. “Yeah, I get it. For sure.”

The man doesn’t even look back as he moves past Naruto and the guy he’d just been beating down, not once. For good measure, Naruto calls out after him, saying, “I mean it!”

When he’s completely out of sight and Naruto fears he might worry a hole all the way through the lip he’s been idly chewing on, he turns back to the only guy left standing with him and surveys the bruising on his cheek.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” he says, and he smiles. He hopes it looks promising. The guy doesn’t look at him directly, eyes glancing over the ground, fingers still gripping his bag so carefully. Naruto lifts a hand to rub idly at the nape of his neck, and the movement makes the guy flinch. Naruto frowns, lips opening around something conciliatory, but the guy quickly says, “Thanks,” and turns.

He runs away from Naruto in just the same way that the others had, even though he’d been the one Naruto had saved. Naruto watches him go with an expression twisted in frustration, lifting his arms to cross over his chest.

Naruto thinks maybe he should really practice getting used to reactions like this, ever since that incident in the middle of his first year. Misunderstandings really can misconstrue widespread opinions, something that he has found out the hard way.

All it had taken for him to become known as the Academy’s Hidden Monster was a single fight, him against a group of nine third-years picking on someone half their size—someone Naruto didn’t know, but felt for. He’d fought them off one-by-one, sometimes two at a time, and somehow he’d gained quite a crowd. They missed entirely the way he’d been standing up for someone in need, and saw only a young kid taking a beating from several third-years, and giving back just as good as he got.

He got more than their misunderstood and fearful admiration; he got two broken ribs, a broken finger, and two black eyes for his trouble. He did, however, win that fight.

Being the only one able to walk away from it was something he definitely considered a win.

Yet even hoisting that first-year into his arms and walking him off the scene before calling him an ambulance didn’t detract from the new persona the Academy students were so insistent on giving him. They’d cleared out by then, no one sticking around to witness the aftermath.

They simply deemed him the nine-tailed fox, a monster who took down a third-year with each of his tails.

Ever since, complete strangers have responded to him with fear and apprehension. People barely look at him, and when they do, they hurry on past, fingers clutching tightly to their belongings, frightened of him. In a single evening, he became a pariah, the Academy’s most infamous delinquent.

He learned to embrace the solitude, after the first month or so; stopped calling out for attention, when all it got him was trouble and fear; stopped trying to make conversation with those sitting around him, when all they did was turn away.

A few people stand out, however, against the crowds.

There’s a girl he sees sometimes in the halls, who always wears her hair in buns, who always seems proud of him. She always offers him her knuckles as they pass each other, and it’s comforting.

The creepy guy who wears sunglasses even indoors is a welcoming presence, too, though he’s quieter than the grave and Naruto can never actually see his expression. He never shifts away from Naruto, though, and he nods and hums along with Naruto’s conversation.

And then there’s Hinata and her friendly smiles, the shy way she ducks her head but doesn’t tear her eyes away from him whenever they come across each other.

He wonders about that, more often than he would probably feel comfortable admitting. If Naruto were still in the practice of freely talking to his classmates, she would be the first he’d like to interact with. Something about her is calming, tranquil and welcoming.

He likes being near her.

Naruto blinks, realizing his distraction has lost him some detrimental time, and checks his watch. His heart drops low and he turns on his heel, ready to race all the way through the city just to make it to the shop a few minutes late.

When he turns, however, he finds that ever familiar cascade of midnight hair catching hold of the sunlight. He stutters to a stop and watches Hinata lean down to pick up his bag from where he’d forgotten it in lieu of launching himself at the offender. When she straightens, she lifts a hand to tuck some of her hair behind her ear, and Naruto sees that she’s blushing.

His heart beats out a song that vibrates through his bones, so much so that when she finally approaches him and holds his backpack strap out, his hands tremble just enough to be noticeable.

“Thanks,” he says, and his voice is more of a croak than he’d like. Hinata’s smile is a slow movement over her expression, touching first the corners of her lips, then reaching up into the glimmer of her eyes.

“You’re welcome,” she says, and Naruto thinks even her voice is beautiful. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes trail over his ripped clothes, covered in dirt; only the latter is a new development, though he certainly won’t be the one to say so. He runs his hands over his clothes and ignores the clouds of dust that puff off of him, and focuses entirely on the amused way her eyebrows leap up on her forehead.

“Yeah, yeah of course,” he says, and then, “But actually I am running super late for work.”

“Oh,” she says, as he reaches out and grasps the strap of his bag. He lets his fingertips trail lightly over her palm and hopes she thinks it an accident. Naruto has been so long without human contact, even innocently stolen moment feels special. “Sorry to keep you, then.”

“It’s cool,” he says, and he’s stalling, steps faltering to move him away from her. They shift enough for the sunset to drape her shoulders, casting her expression in shadow, and Naruto shivers. “I’m sorry to rush this, I really wish I could stay.”

“It’s okay,” she says, and Naruto’s heart drops for reasons he can’t even understand. But then, just a breath later, she says, “I do need to speak with you, Naruto-kun. But it can wait, if you have work.”

“Oh,” he breathes, brows pursing in confusion even as his lips curl unconsciously into a smile. He wonders what specifically she wants to talk about, but feels too excited about a promised future conversation between the two of them to really focus on the prospect.

Hinata hesitates.

“Could I maybe meet you after your shift?” She asks, and Naruto inhales through his teeth in surprise. Hinata must misinterpret his reaction, or maybe she’s simply not as confident as he’d always thought her to be, because she backtracks immediately. “Or it can wait until tomorrow, I don’t want to intrude or be a bother.”

“You wouldn’t,” he says, “You won’t. You’d never be a bother, Hinata. My shift ends at ten though, is that too late?”

Hinata’s cheeks are a spilled canvas of sunset rose, and she gives this information its due consideration before nodding.

“That’s fine.”

“Awesome,” he nods, and he knows his smile is probably too big, too bright for such a simple conversation, but Hinata is kind and gentle in a way that almost _hurts_ , and Naruto aches for it. “It’s this old car shop near the Nara forestry center. It’s a little hard to find—“

“I know the place,” Hinata says, surprising him. She lifts a hand and plays with the ends of her bangs for a moment, a nervous gesture. There’s another pointed hesitation before she lets her words follow, her shyness apparent in every dip and groove of her expression. “I have a friend who works there. I’ve visited him once; I think I may have seen you.”

“Oh,” Naruto says again, focusing entirely for a moment on that heavy fall of Hinata’s eyelashes, and the way she rolls her lips when she’s nervous. “Right. Cool, then. Well, if you get lost, call someone to get you right away, okay? Not the safest area, and I don’t have a phone.”

After a moment of thought after learning that last bit of information, Hinata nods.

“Go, go,” she encourages, smile small and true. “I don’t want to make you late.”

Naruto grins, large enough for crow’s feet to appear beside his eyes. He rubs at the back of his head even as he starts moving away from her, walking backwards. He doesn’t tell her that he’s already late, and guaranteed to be later than ever. He does, however, lift a hand to wave and force himself to turn away from her completely, after a few selfish feet of backwards walking.

He runs the entire way to the shop with Hinata’s kind eyes in mind, and the subtle way her lips curl under his gaze.

His heart races ever faster.

 

✧

 

Naruto thinks about the possibility—the inevitability—of his class president waiting outside his run-down and humbly decrepit workplace for his entire shift. He rolls further under the top-end of a vehicle nicer than most and reaches into the heart of it, fingertips smeared with grease and oil.

Everything in the shop smells like home, the oil and the metal and the smoke; it clings to him, seeps into his jumper and remains until he brings it home with him. There’s grease smeared on his sweaty forearms, and possibly his elbows, and definitely one of his sideburns. There’s something suspiciously slippery on his left eyebrow, leeching into his hairline, but he barely notices it.

Instead, he focuses entirely on the parts under his fingertips, and the way they mold to his making.

Cars have always been easy, for Naruto. A systematic putting-together of parts to make something incredible run—he wonders at times if politicians see the world in just the same way. Naruto can look at any single car and think, _I can fix you_.

He wonders if world leaders do the same, but with nations.

“Naruto?” A rasping voice calls, and Naruto blinks.

“Yeah?”

He hears shuffling feet scuffing the pavement; a quiet curse slips through the dense air around them. A pair of torn-up boots stop beside him, and he hears Kiba reach out and touch something in the opened hood.

“Don’t touch that,” Naruto reprimands him, still completely hidden from sight tucked entirely under the vehicle. “I don’t need you undoing all of my hard work with your clumsy fingers.”

“Okay,” Kiba says, “Rude.”

Naruto grins, jaunty and smug, and gives one last final twist of his wrench. He sets it aside and slides his way out from under the car, nearly wheeling right over Kiba’s feet. Kiba leaps back out of the way, much further than he really needed to, and it makes Naruto snort. Kiba offers a rude gesture in response, before rubbing idly at his chin to survey the car in front of them.

“She’s a beaut,” Kiba sighs, and his wide eyes trace the dips and curves of the ocean blue vintage Camaro lovingly enough to make Naruto want to glance away. He just shrugs, though, and adds, “Yeah, and she’s worth more than my entire apartment.”

Kiba flaps a hand, dismissing the comment.

“Whatever,” he says flippantly, before crossing his arms and turning to Naruto with a curious gaze. “I’m heading out. You staying late again?”

“Yup.” Naruto reaches into his pocket and retrieves his trusty rag before absentmindedly cleaning off every one of his fingers. It doesn’t remove all of the grease, and smears quite a bit of it, but it does enough. It’s also a kind of comfort, now, that means he’s done good work. It’s soothing, knowing he’s useful in this regard.

“Your paycheck is gonna be _lit_ ,” Kiba whistles, and Naruto has to laugh. He glances over to Kiba with shining eyes, says, “That’s the plan.”

“Please,” Kiba begs, “ _Please_ tell me you’re going to do something cool with that cash. If you so much as _mention_ savings, if you even _think_ the word savings—”

Naruto stays decidedly quiet, only smirking at Kiba while he has another of his many amusing breakdowns over Naruto’s insistence on saving every penny he earns.

“I can’t,” Kiba says. “I literally can’t. I refuse.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Naruto laughs, approaching the front end of the Camaro to gently lower the hood. He lets his fingertips slide almost fondly over the paint, before dragging them back to his sides. He tucks them and his trusty rag back into his pockets, and he watches as Kiba just shakes his head and looks at him in blatant disgust.

He says, “Well, I’m buying a bike.”

Naruto can’t help the way his eyes light up, or the way his lips fall to parting. His heart beats a little more insistently at the mere mention of a street bike, and from the new expression on Kiba’s face, it’s clear that he _knows_ it.

“You could be in the same boat, man. Or wait, is that it? Is that what you’re saving for?”

Naruto is a sincere guy by nature, inherently opposed to dishonesty. It would be so easy to lie, in this moment, to tell Kiba that after all these years of saving instead of indulging, it’s all been for _this_ purpose: a street bike.

But the lie doesn’t even occur to him, doesn’t even cross his mind. That inherent sincerity forbids even the recognition of it, and as such he only responds with what he knows: the honest truth.

“Nah, man,” he says, lifting a hand to rub wryly at the back of his head, uncaring of how dirty his fingers are. “I’m just saving.”

It doesn’t occur to him, even after the words leave his lips, that this is the closest he’s ever come to actually lying. A lie of omission, telling his coworkers vaguely, _I’m just saving_ , and not mentioning why, or for what.

Or for whom.

Kiba sighs, rolling his eyes and turning back to the doorway. He reaches out and rests a hand on the doorframe, tapping his fingers, and turns over his shoulder to say, “Well, whatever you’re saving for, man, I hope it’s worth it in the end. You deserve it. Don’t ever tell anyone I said that, so help me.”

Naruto laughs, a short one-two bubble wrap exhalation. He lifts two fingers in a semblance of showing honor and says, “Go home, dumbass. It’s late.”

Kiba flips him off even as he walks through the door and towards the parking lot, head ducked low. Naruto grins, turns back to the Camaro and breathes.

“It’ll be worth it,” he says to the open air, already distracted by his next task on the next car in line. He lifts up the inventory sheet with his past notes scribbled in the margins, tasks underlined and starred in his awful smudged handwriting. He ignores the way his tone unconsciously becomes a reflection of persuasion, trying so hard to be convincing.

He thinks of a family tree without a canopy, without a trunk, just a single spiraling seed in the dirt of the earth.

“Believe it.”

 

✧

 

By the time Naruto finishes working on his third car, the moon is his only companion. She bathes his skin in pale light, keeping him company as he closes up the shop. He whistles to himself as he locks up, slinging his bag over his shoulder and clutching the strap. He checks his watch, catches the time, and puts a little more speed in his step as he heads to the front of the shop.

His heart trips in his chest the moment he sees her, standing there under a single streetlight, looking too beautiful to be real.

She turns at the sound of his sneakers scuffing the pavement, and she smiles.

“Naruto-kun,” she greets, as he comes to stand before her. She looks up into his eyes and her smile throws lines beside her eyes, constant reminders of a lifetime of joy. “Hi.”

“Hey,” he breathes, and he can’t help but to smile in return. He wants to reach out and touch her cheek, to feel if her skin is as soft as it looks, to trace his thumb over her lower lip. He fists his hands in his pockets and focuses on the way she turns to face him completely, her body language utterly receptive.

“How was work?” She asks, and Naruto blinks, surprised even when he really shouldn’t be. Friends ask their friends about work all the time, right? Naruto feels a tinge of sadness when he realizes he’s never really been asked that before. No matter how simple the question, he’s excited to answer it, to get to have this experience like so many others.

He grins, says, “It was good. Got a ton of work done, so tomorrow shouldn’t be too crazy.”

He watches the way her eyes trace his expression, lingering on his brow and the hinge of his jaw. He remembers, then, the grease that’s undoubtedly smeared across his face, and he blushes. He lifts a hand to wipe idly at his brow, and Hinata’s smile gentles.

“Messy, though,” he laughs, and the complete lack of judgment in her gaze makes his chest feel lighter.

“Seems like it,” she says, and her subtle laughter is wind chimes in the mix of the city’s industrial chaos—the flurry of trains along the tracks, streetlights buzzing, vehicles moving past. “It’s kind of nice, though, right? If you think about it, the messy parts are just a reminder that you’ve worked hard.”

She blushes after she says this, and Naruto is so entirely ensnared. He can’t look away from the heat of her cheeks, or the sudden way she can’t meet his eyes. He swallows, says, “Yeah.”

“Right,” she says, after a moment. She’s clearly embarrassed, which Naruto can’t help but to find endearing, but she straightens her spine and manages to meet his eyes once more. “The reason we’re meeting.”

“Oh,” Naruto laughs, “Right, yeah. I totally forgot we needed a reason.”

He says this unabashedly, and he doesn’t feel an inkling of embarrassment after the fact. That same dogged sincerity that he has lived with leaves no room for him to do anything but express himself as candidly as he can.

It embarrasses _her_ , though, he notices. She glances away immediately with a startled little laugh, and she starts to fidget. She touches the tips of her fingertips together and shifts her weight, and Naruto waits her out patiently. He doesn’t hide the fondness of his expression as he watches her try to regain control of her expression, heated and pink with embarrassment. He thinks, _it’s too easy to adore her._

“Well,” she says, clearing her throat. “I wish it was a better reason, but it’s not. It’s not fun at all.”

A sudden realization embarks on Naruto’s present thought, and he interrupts her to ask, “Wanna go somewhere? There’s this café nearby that doesn’t close, like, ever. We can get pancakes.”

Hinata blinks up at him, lips still gaping, before finally offering a single startled nod. Naruto grins, and wonders if it would be okay to hold her hand. They’ve only really just met recently, he thinks, and in a rare showing of self-control, Naruto puts his fists back into his pockets and gestures for her to follow him with a single jut of his chin.

“This way, then.”

She walks a pace behind him, just right there at his side, close enough that their arms almost brush. Naruto wants to close the gap; it’s all he can think about, so much so that he almost misses his turn to lead them to the café. He catches himself a moment after, when he glances over to see her biting her lip around a smile. His lips curl in response, her hidden joy infectious.

He holds the door open for her, and she doesn’t even have to duck under his arm to get through the doorway. For some reason this makes his heart race a little wilder, a little harder. She has to look up to meet his eyes, and he wants desperately to lean down and allow their lips to meet.

He greets Ino, the shop owner’s daughter and residing manager, and asks after her family before leading Hinata over to his usual booth.

“I come here a lot,” he explains, when their waitress comes over and greets him with a smack to the back of his head and a snarled, _it’s been too damn long, Naruto_. “That waitress is my childhood friend, actually.”

He doesn’t mention that she’s also sort of his only friend, though.

Hinata’s lips part in understanding, and she glances over his head to watch Ino and Sakura interact. Naruto turns over his shoulder in time to see Ino reach out and tuck a strand of Sakura’s hair behind her ear, and it makes him smile. When he turns back to Hinata, she doesn’t look surprised or off put in the slightest. Rather, there’s a soft heaviness to her expression, almost dreamy, as she watches the tender moment.

She turns back to Naruto with a small smile, says, “They’re sweet.”

Naruto rolls his eyes. “They are _evil_ ,” he says, “But I’ll save that story for another day.”

Naruto watches Hinata’s response far more carefully than he might’ve needed to, but the implication that he wants to sit down with Hinata and talk with her again is one he feels he needs to watch closely. He’s pleased when she immediately smiles wider and nods, agreeing with a simple, “I’d love to hear it.”

“For now, though, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ruin the mood a bit.”

“Oh,” Naruto says, deflating. His heavy shoulders wilt only slightly enough for him to notice that he’s reacting physically, something that usually slips the notice of those he interacts with. Hinata, however, hones in on his body language and reaches out halfheartedly with one hand, almost placating.

“It’s like that?” He asks, and he laughs without humor. “Damn.”

“It’s nothing awful,” she says, trying desperately to mollify him. “It’s just that, as class president, I’m obligated to talk to you about the fight from earlier.”

Naruto waits a beat for understanding to settle in, and then his entire countenance brightens like morning.

“That’s it?” He asks, and even his tone is brighter. “Shit, I totally thought you were about to dump me.”

Hinata’s cheeks gradually spill into a canvas of reds, and she lifts a hand to cover her mouth even as she stutters, “Dump you?”

Naruto realizes his mistake and what it implied immediately, and brings a hand up to idly fluffy the hair over his nape.

“Not like _dump_ dump, but like get rid of me forever. Tell me you don’t ever wanna talk to me again or something, ya know?”

“Oh no,” Hinata shakes her head, lifting both hands and shaking them slightly. “Of course nothing like that.”

“Of course,” Naruto grins, enjoying both her startled sincerity and the underlying promise in words like _of course_.

“Why would you think that?” She goes on to ask, eyebrows pursed and lips frowning. Naruto doesn’t startle or even hesitate. He merely shrugs his shoulders and answers.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” he says, and glances over his shoulder to see if Sakura was anywhere close to bringing their chocolate milks. When he doesn’t see hide nor hair of her, he turns back to Hinata with a self-deprecating smile, lacking in true humor. “I’m not the most popular person, ya know?”

Hinata chews on her lower lip, frowning at him. Her eyes leap back and forth between his, studying him so carefully he feels laid bare before her, secrets and hidden truths all accessories to her witness.

“Naruto-kun,” she says, in a voice that’s lower than before. There’s no pity or condescension present in her tone, only a strange tinge of curiosity that Naruto recognizes as often prefacing a question. He’s proved right about that when she goes on to ask, “Is it because you get into fights?”

A low-building and slow-burning kind of anger laces the insides of his veins, only vibrant enough to just barely affect his tone of voice into something harsher.

“That’s not it,” he denies immediately, shaking his head. He pushes a hearty breath out and searches for the right words, the right way to explain to her that he doesn’t get into fights for fun or even because he wants to—he’s just usually in the right place at the right time when someone is getting pushed around. “I don’t like to fight.”

Hinata doesn’t judge him; she appears a paragon of neutrality.

“You don’t like to fight,” she starts, her tone objective. “But, Naruto-kun, you _are_ often found right in the middle of them.”

Naruto sits back in his seat and groans, knowing that even kind-hearted Hinata doesn’t quite believe him.

“I just—” he starts, before hesitating, trying desperately to find the right words. He’s interrupted only briefly when Sakura returns with their chocolate milks and pancakes both. She leaves a moment later with a single raised brow that means he’s _definitely_ going to be explaining things to her later, but she doesn’t hover.

Naruto tries again.

“I don’t like when people pick on others, you know? Especially when they can’t or won’t stand up for themselves. I can’t stand by and just _watch_.”

Recognition flickers across Hinata’s expression as quick as a hare, settling brightly in the luminous pools of her eyes. She sits back, too, and he watches her work over the information he’d offered her. He frowns around two massive bites of pancakes that he smothers in maple syrup, chewing aggressively.

He doesn’t know how to make it much clearer for her, or for anyone else. He recognizes, too, that when he interferes with fights and consequently gets _into_ fights, he’s not really putting a stop to the fighting at all. He’s just turning the direction of it into one he can manage, one that’s safer for the innocent party. It’s not seamless and it’s not perfect, but it’s all Naruto can come up with. It’s what he’s comfortable with.

Naruto watches understanding unfold in the beauty of Hinata’s open expression. She takes the time to lean forward and take a single bite of her pancakes, smiling around the flavor, before she responds to him.

She says, “I think I understand.”

“Yeah?” Naruto asks, tone hopeful.

“Yeah,” she agrees with a careful nod. “But I still can’t accept it.”

Naruto’s heart clenches, then drops. He feels the weight of it in his stomach, and frustration pools there. He opens his lips to refute, but when her lips tilt up marginally into a gentle smile, the breath leaves him.

“You have good intentions,” she says, idly pushing her pancakes around her plate, almost pensively. “But you can’t be beating these people up, you know?”

“It’s self defense!” He proclaims immediately, banging a fist on the table. Hinata doesn’t even startle, and actually laughs.

“There are safer ways to defend yourself and others,” she promises him, eyes falling heavily, almost fondly as she gazes at him. “Would you be willing to work with me on this?”

Startled by the phrasing, he blinks and asks, “Work with you?”

“Yes,” she says, “As class president, I don’t condone fighting, even if it’s for good reasons, like helping those who can’t help themselves.”

Naruto is familiar with the pointed, sudden stab of betrayal; the way it cannot be guarded against or softened, but instead destroys deftly straight through the heart. This is nothing so intense as that—he has barely gotten to know her, after all—but there’s still a twinge, an ache, that starts to thrum against his bones.

That is, until she blinks slowly, glances down to her lap and adds almost nervously, “And as your friend, I want to help make sure that you can keep helping others, just in a way that won’t get you into trouble.”

 _As your friend_ , Naruto thinks, and his world becomes a blur for a few startling seconds. When everything straightens out again, Hinata is still there, blushing down at her pancakes, admitting openly and without hesitation that she views him as a friend.

For anyone else, this would’ve been simple, unremarkable.

But for Naruto, who is the pariah of the Academy and an orphan of the streets of a city that’s never loved him, her welcoming him into such an intimate position as _friendship_ is something monumentally beautiful.

And quite astounding.

He blinks at her, and the urge to reach out to her is so strong he has to press his fingertips into the skin of his thigh, hard enough that he knows he’ll bruise. What is it about her, so kind and gentle and accepting, that shakes his self-control so fundamentally?

“Yeah,” he croaks, licking his lips. He traces the softened edges of her expression with his eyes, and doesn’t hesitate even when he notices how flustered it makes her to be the sole object of his intense focus. His joy blossoms over his expression as slowly and as beautifully as sunrise, and he says, “Let’s work together, as friends.”

And Hinata’s answering smile is a direct reflection of his bounding joy, edged brilliantly in luminous relief.

 

✧

 

At first, Naruto and Hinata agree to meet each other at the café whenever their schedules align, so that they can discuss how to shift Naruto’s unfortunately timed protective ventures into something less destructive.

In the following weeks after that initial meet-up, Naruto learns more about Hinata than he ever expected to—more even than he ever could’ve dreamt.

He learns that she’s a pacifist to the bone, and that she’s smarter even than he ever could’ve imagined. She comes up with strategies he can barely wrap his head around most of the time, all of which involve him talking his way out of fights rather than hitting his way out. She tells him that he has a way with words, and at first he thinks she’s teasing him, making fun, but she doesn’t back down from the subject.

“You have a way of making people listen,” she says, once, when they’re walking back to the café after having stopped to get ice cream cones. Hinata talks animatedly about things she’s passionate about, something else he has learned, and she almost loses her cone several times as she tries to convince him of how truly she believes he can change the world with just his voice.

He learns that her favorite flavor of ice cream is any and all of them, and that her favorite flowers follow the same logic, though she’s extremely partial to begonias and thunbergias, whatever those look like. He asks her a lot of questions, finds that’s the best way to get her to talk about herself, since she’s otherwise fairly reticent.

And yet, he also learns a lot about her without having to ask anything at all. Sometimes when he lays in bed at night and closes his eyes but doesn’t yet sleep, he thinks of the way she closes her eyes when she smiles at strangers; the way she traces her lips with her thumbnail when she’s thinking deeply; the way her laughter welcomes every figment of light into the joy of her expression, and holds.

First and foremost, Naruto learns that Hyuuga Hinata is easy to love.

He sits beside her in their shared classes, now, and she doesn’t even seem to mind the stares. She’s diligent in her studies, but sometimes she humors him in-between the professor’s pauses to laugh at his doodles or show him some of her own. In-between classes and Naruto’s exhaustive work schedule, he and Hinata discuss everything they can think of between the sun and the earth, and then beyond that.

“Personally, I think there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth,” she says one day as they walk through the halls, crowds bending around them so as to not make contact. They do this because of Naruto—the moment they see him they shift almost unconsciously away, and a nearly palpable shiver of fear races between the walls. Hinata ignores it completely, just as Naruto always does, and he turns to smile down at her without even thinking to hide an inkling of the admiration he holds for her from his expression.

She doesn’t glance up at him in time to see it, and bulldozes on ahead in her theory.

“Shino thinks there might be the same amount of bugs as stars in the universe,” she says, pursing her lips in contemplation, “But that one’s tough because bugs are alive, they live and they die.”

“Stars do too, though, right?” Naruto adds, as close to self-conscious as he ever gets, which isn’t actually very close at all. He’s not nearly as knowledgeable about this topic or so many others that Hinata brings up to him, but she never judges him, never laughs at him. “They’re alive, right?”

Hinata stops in her tracks, and even before she turns to blink curiously up at Naruto, he can see a smile blooming over her expression. She beams up at him unabashedly, even as her cheeks spill rose pink.

“They do,” she breathes, “They are.”

That day, Hinata’s fingers brushed against his as they walked further down the hall.

Now, Hinata sits in Naruto’s loaned car for his delivery job, a textbook in her lap with a notebook on top of it and a pen in her hand. She doesn’t say anything about his sharp turns or the general bumpiness of the road and the ride, and she never once complains about the radio, though Naruto keeps it low for her.

She does her homework and listens to him chatter on and on about his customers and his jobs, each of the three of them, before he glances over at her textbook and cringes at what he sees.

“What the fuck is that?” He asks eloquently, turning his eyes back to the road. Hinata laughs lowly, amused without even looking over to see his horrified expression.

“It’s organic chemistry,” she explains, marking something down for a moment before glancing over at Naruto to gauge his expression. “And it’s as awful as it looks and sounds.”

“Yikes,” Naruto agrees, pulling up to the curb in front of his present customer’s place. He reaches into the back seat and is hyperaware of the way his shoulder brushes against Hinata’s, if only for a moment. He wonders if she notices, wonders if he’s just oversensitive to the contact between them because he voraciously wants more of it, constantly.

When he turns back to the steering wheel with two boxes of pizza in hand, he glances over and around the fall of Hinata’s long hair and sees her cheeks are bright red. His heart twinges in his chest, a rapid inquiry pounded against his ribs, and he can’t help but to smile. He almost feels smug, knowing that he isn’t the only one so attuned to the way they sometimes brush against each other.

“Be right back,” he says, climbing out of the driver’s side. Hinata only nods, and he smiles even more. He jogs up a flight of stairs and delivers the pizzas to some college kids who tip generously, and hustles back down to the car. It’s ridiculous, and unwarranted, but being apart from Hinata has come to feel unfamiliar and discomfiting to him. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and he’s sure it’s not really in the range of codependency, but the way he sees it is simple.

He just doesn’t like it.

So he hurries back to her, finds her exactly as he’d left her, writing notes down and blushing behind the curtain of her hair. He slides into his seat, shuts the door, and secures his seatbelt. He turns to her then, and without hesitation he reaches out and tucks the curtain of hair separating her face from his view away behind her ear.

It’s the first time that Naruto has ever allowed himself to actually reach out to her, to touch her. She stares down at her notes and doesn’t move for the longest moment, even as Naruto’s fingers only just barely begin to slide away. When they do, she turns to him and her eyes are wide, lips parted, stunned. He only smiles at her, feels the way his heart races joyously in his chest, and says, “That’s better.”

He turns back to the steering wheel and turns the key in the ignition, all the while feeling Hinata’s gaze on his profile. He doesn’t glance back to her immediately; instead, he just smiles out at the road ahead of him and begins to whistle lowly to the tune over the radio.

He can’t keep to himself for long, though, and eventually succumbs to the desire to glance back over and see both her expression and whatever it is she’s now doing. She seems to have switched subjects without him noticing, this time with far less numbers and much, much too many words.

“What’s this now?” He asks nosily, glancing curiously at her lap. Hinata swallows, and the corners of her lips quirk up helplessly at his childlike curiosity.

“English,” she answers, turning to grin up at him. “I actually enjoy this one.”

“I _hate_ English,” Naruto laments, all joy wiped from his expression and replaced with dramatic suffering. It serves its purpose, however, as Hinata takes one look at him and bursts into laughter.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she laughs, eyes crinkling at the sides. “It’s not _that_ bad.”

“I’m failing,” he responds blithely, unashamed. “I’m _always_ failing English.”

Hinata hums, and falls quiet for a moment. When Naruto hits a red light, he glances over at her again and sees that she’s contemplating something, mulling it over and rolling her lips together absentmindedly. After a moment, during which the light turns green and Naruto continues on his way, glancing at the GPS to make sure he’s on the right route, Hinata turns her body to face him a little more amenably.

“Hey Naruto-kun?” She asks, only continuing on after he grunts in response. “Would you like for me to tutor you in English?”

Naruto blinks for a long time, startled. He glances over at her and blinks some more, until she has to glance away self-consciously.

Finally, he says, “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” she responds instantly, tone steady. “You’re my friend.”

Naruto’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, and his heart lurches. Her kindness is something he feels he might never actually grow used to, at least not enough to stop feeling so surprised every time she selflessly offers him something, just like now. In any other world, he would’ve said yes immediately, yes of course.

But in this world, presently, he has concerns.

“Ah, Hinata,” he sighs, allowing his grip on the wheel to loosen back up again, tension bleeding out of him. “That’s really kind of you to offer.”

He can feel her watching him, as he turns his blinker on and takes another right turn.

“But?” She asks, sensing his hesitation.

He smiles, turns to her for a moment and doesn’t mask his fondness for her.

“But,” he says, and turns back to the road. “I don’t have the money. I can’t afford tutoring right now.”

 _Or ever_ , he thinks wryly.

The silence that falls between them isn’t heavy, or uncomfortable. There’s a measured kind of carefulness, though, that Naruto has grown used to while spending so much time with Hinata. She’s always careful around others, wary of overstepping or offending, of misunderstanding or hurting them. Naruto noticed it early on with him, once Hinata learned about his three jobs, and the ramshackle location of his shoddy studio apartment.

At the same time that she learned he was an orphan with nothing left to his name, they were still learning about each other. He can still remember how wary she’d been with that conversation, when he’d followed his explanation with curious questions about her family; the careful way she explained her family, a father and a sister and a cousin that she was close to, and even more carefully: that she is wealthy.

It’s almost amusing to Naruto, how careful Hinata is when talking about money, especially with him. She’s the kindest, most respectful person he’s ever met, and she tries so hard to be fair when it comes to money. When they go out to eat together, she agrees with his insistence on splitting the bill evenly, and allowing him to pay for her at times—with the consolation that she can pay for him, too.

Of course he’d agreed—he may not have money, but even still, it’s not the most important thing in his life. Not fundamentally. He needs it for a purpose, and that’s it. But Hinata, coming from a family of wealth and knowing his struggle, tries so diligently to refrain from overstepping with him.

And so with this admission regarding her offer of tutoring and the following silence between them, Naruto smiles. He can almost hear the cogs turning in her mind, the way her thoughts twist and curl around novel options to try to come up with a plan that’s respectful of both of their wishes.

He waits patiently for her to speak, wondering all the while what she’ll come up with. The first thing she must’ve considered was whether or not he’d accept free tutoring, but she must’ve rejecting that as quickly as she thought it, because of course he wouldn’t. He almost expects her to just let it go, to say something open-ended like, _oh, okay, well let me know if you change your mind_.

But instead, she surprises him by saying, “We can make a deal, and I can give you a discount.”

He frowns, confused but still vaguely disapproving.

“Hinata.”

“Hear me out,” she argues, and he can hear the persuasion attempt coming a mile away. “I can tutor you in any subjects you need, and you can pay the discounted price.”

Naruto pulls up to another driveway curb and unbuckles his seatbelt, glancing over to Hinata and finding her expression steely and unbending. It amuses him enough to make him smile, even as he starts shaking his head. He doesn’t give her an answer just yet though, choosing instead to mull it over on his walk up the driveway and back. By the time he makes it back into his seat, buckled and ready for another delivery, he has decided to humor her for the time being.

“Why the discount?” He asks, and her silence makes him glance back over to her. She looks slightly nervous, rolling her lips together and glancing down at her feet. Had he been less experienced in reading her expression, he might’ve thought she was offering him a discount because of his monetary situation. The nervousness makes sense, coming from her—as someone who tries to hard to be fair.

But he knows her expressions better than he knows his own, and this kind of nervousness is borne of shyness, of uncertainty.

“Hinata?”

She chews on her lip for a moment and doesn’t look at him even as she finally responds, her voice as low as a whisper.

“The discount is because I want something in return,” she admits. It takes her a moment, but she garners the courage to look up at him and her eyes, this time, are wide and so earnest Naruto can do nothing but to stare. He thinks that she could ask anything of him with that expression, and he would agree to it, just like that.

She may think that his words move people, but she can do the same with just a _look_.

And yet, even more startling than the power of her gaze are the words that follow.

She says, “I want you to teach me how to fight.”

And Naruto nearly misses his turn.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I will write a second chapter/sequel/last chapter when I can find the time to, which will hopefully be soon, but no promises (sadly).


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